Sugar Ants
While there are thousands of different ant species, there are just a few ants that are troublesome to McKinney area property owners. Perhaps the most well-known ants are sugar ants. These are the ants that form neat columns straight to your pantry. Sugar ants aren’t a specific ant species, but rather a group of ants that share the same affinity for, you got it, sweets. Sugar ants have incredibly powerful odor receptors. They can sense that little scrap of donut from this morning’s breakfast from a very long way off. When they finally locate it, after marching into your home, they send pheromone signals to other ants to come too.
Fire Ants
Another common type of ant in McKinney is the fire ant. Now, these ants bite, and boy can they sting. You will know they are on your property because of their nests, dense mazes of temperature-controlled rooms underground. Fire ants make their homes in moist soil and they prefer their colony to be covered by bricks, wood, or other shelters. But when they can’t have that, their homes will jut above ground in a dome-like volcanic pile of material that resembles sand. Fire ants can survive year-round. Outfitted with special mandibles, they inject venom into their victims. The bites cause a burning sensation on the skin, which can be dangerous or deadly to pets, children, and adults with allergies.
Carpenter Ants
While the fire ant is dangerous to your health, carpenter ants are dangerous to your McKinney home. Large colonies of carpenter ants tunnel through the wood in homes where they make their nests. Because they breed quickly, a carpenter ant infestation could cause serious damage to the structural integrity of your McKinney home, possibly costing thousands of dollars to repair.
Whether the uninvited ants in your home are just a nuisance or dangerous to your home or family, the team at Big D Pest & Termite Services understands that no ant is welcome in your home. That’s why prevention is key to keeping your McKinney property ant-free!
How Can I Start Preventing Ants?
Step 1: Deep Clean: The most important prevention tip you can start today is maintaining cleanliness in your home. This can be hard in the most lived-in areas of your home, especially the kitchen. Because ants are attracted to food, keeping counters wiped down and regularly sweeping and mopping will go a long way to making your home less inviting to these pests. Cleaning under appliances like the refrigerator, the dishwasher, and the oven will also help police those scraps that getaway during mealtimes.
Step 2: Eliminate access to food and water: Eliminating access to food and water are key prevention measures. Keep areas inside your home as moisture-free as possible. Enclose food, especially sweets, in tightly sealed containers. This might mean double-bagging items like honey or syrup.
Step 3: Keep them out with proper seals: Keeping ants out is a hard task because of their small size. But sealing up possible entry points can help. Go around your home and check for holes in walls, cracks in the foundation, or spaces between screens and doors. Can light get in? If light can penetrate through the space, so can an ant. Replace screens that have tears in them. Install door sweeps to eliminate spaces between the floor and the door.
When Prevention Fails…
The best form of home ant control comes with professional assistance. If you have an ant problem, contact Big D Pest & Termite Services today. We can help!